San Antonio man's arrest while carrying rifle sparks furor

Henry Vichique,center, and wife Danielle, appear at a rally with C.J. Grisham, right, president of Open Carry Texas.

Henry Vichique,center, and wife Danielle, appear at a rally with C.J. Grisham, right, president of Open Carry Texas.

Photo: Alma E. Hernandez, For The San Antonio Express News

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A tattoo bears the sentiments of an attendee at a recent rally in support of Henry Vichique, a menber of Open Carry Texas. "We want to get people used to seeing guns and not fearing them," said C.J. Grisham, who is head of the group, which advocates the carrying of firearms in public.

A tattoo bears the sentiments of an attendee at a recent rally in support of Henry Vichique, a menber of Open Carry Texas. "We want to get people used to seeing guns and not fearing them," said C.J. Grisham,

Michael Moody, left, and Mason Deering were among those rallying in support of Henry Vichigue, a San Antonio man and member of Open Carry Texas who was arrested by police while carrying a loaded rifle.

Michael Moody, left, and Mason Deering were among those rallying in support of Henry Vichigue, a San Antonio man and member of Open Carry Texas who was arrested by police while carrying a loaded rifle.

Photo: Alma E. Hernandez, For The San Antonio Express News

Debate continues over open carry laws

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WASHINGTON - Henry Vichique became a local poster child for the national open-carry movement when San Antonio police arrested him March 30 while he was walking home with a loaded Russian World War II-vintage rifle slung across his shoulder.

The arrest catapaulted Vichique, 19, onto center stage of a small but growing sector of gun-rights advocacy that sees the open display of weaponry as the ultimate expression of Second Amendment rights.

Open Carry Texas, the state's leading advocacy group on the issue, held a rally Sunday to protest Vichique's arrest, propelling his case to further prominence.

Officers detained Vichique, who is a member of Open Carry Texas, for violating a San Antonio ordinance that bans public displays of rifles and shotguns on public streets, counter to state law that permits open carrying of "long guns." State law, however, prohibits the open carrying of handguns.

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"So often when gun rights are limited in other states, people say 'well, this isn't Texas,'" said Jeff Knox, president of the Phoenix-based Firearms Coalition. "But the reality is Texas has not always had very good gun laws."

Forty-four states permit handgun open carry - 14, including Connecticut, with a permit, and 30 in which no permit is required.

Open-carry activists see their goal as not only affirming Second Amendment rights but creating a new atmosphere in which the public views openly armed individuals as benign rather than as potential mass shooters.

"We want to get people used to seeing guns and not fearing them," said C.J. Grisham, an Army master sergeant stationed at Fort Hood who founded Open Carry Texas after a video of his arrest last year by Temple police for carrying an AR-15 along a country road became a YouTube sensation.

"We're trying to change that paradigm, that these guns are only intended to kill. They are a deterrent to violence," he said. "Especially after what happened in Newtown and Fort Hood, we need to counter that narrative."

Alternate view

Gun-control advocates scoff at the notion that gun displays are something to which the public should become accustomed, and that open carry has anything to do with public safety.

"More guns in more places is not the solution to gun violence," said Brian Malte, senior national policy adviser for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Openly carrying a gun strikes fear and intimidation in places where families and children gather. And it's a negative in terms of public safety because it wastes law enforcement resources when police have to see what the intent is with the firearm."

Open carry has come a long way since the shadowy days in 2009 when gun owners openly displaying 9mm pistols and an AR-15 rifle milled about outside venues in Portsmouth, N.H., and Phoenix where President Barack Obama was speaking, drawing media attention and some public unease.

Open-carry advocates in recent years have scored successes in states that are pro-gun, including Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas. Last week, the Tennessee state Senate voted to let gun owners display weapons without a permit.

Black Panthers

The NRA, which ignored the 2009 displays, now regularly trumpets these state-level legislative actions. "The bottom line is the NRA always supports self-defense laws," said NRA public affairs director Andrew Arulanandam.

There have been significant defeats as well. Three years ago, California banned open displays of unloaded weapons after a spate of gun-toting demonstrations. Then Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1967 had pushed through California's original ban on open carrying of loaded weapons in the wake of Black Panthers marching through the state Capitol with shotguns, .357 Magnums and other weapons.

Although the concealed carry law has been on the books since 1995, Texas legislators have failed repeatedly to repeal the ban on open-carried handguns.

Now both gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Wendy Davis and Republican Greg Abbott, say they support handgun open carry, and advocates predict it will win approval sooner or later.